Month: September 2013

A wide-ranging interview with Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, and outspoken public intellectual Chris Hedges on his latest book ‘Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt’ and his life spent fighting for political and social justice. Recorded for The Public on CIUT 89.5FM in Toronto, August 2012.

The full text of the United Nations Resolution on Syria has been published and thanks to the efforts of the Russian Federation and China is one of the most balanced of such documents in the last century. However there remains the threat of a western attack on Syria. Continue reading →

US President Barack Obama described the latest Security Council resolution on Syrian chemical weapons as “a huge victory for the world”. It certainly was a huge victory for diplomacy over war, to the relief of the world’s people.

But for Obama to seek credit in the passing of this resolution is contemptible. It was a defeat for warmongers led by the likes of Obama and his Secretary of State John Kerry, who were clamoring for unilateral missile strikes on Syria.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry announced that on August 21 the Assad government slaughtered 1,429 people, including 426 children, in a sarin chemical attack in Ghouta, a Damascus suburb. (Doctors Without Borders put the total at about 300.) Secretary Kerry insisted that now the United States had no choice but to launch U.S. bombing attacks against President Bashar al-Assad, devolving into another of America’s “humanitarian wars.”

The court sentenced today political detainees, including activists and an human rights defender, to total of more than 400 years’ imprisonment and upheld the sentence of 10 years’ imprisonment against two children. All of the sentences were delivered under the internationally criticized and vague terrorism law. The court also reduced the sentences of two police officers who tortured a detainee to death from 10 years’, to 2 years’ imprisonment. The Bahrain Center for Human Rights is gravely concerned over the politically motivated charges and sentences delivered against dissents, and urgently calls for an end to Bahrain’s biased judicial system.

“Knowledge (of) the scale of our capability would raise public awareness generating unwelcome publicity for us and our political masters.” — Classified UK NSA document

“To approve such a program, the Court must have every confidence that the government is doing its utmost to ensure that those responsible for implementation fully comply with the Court’s orders. The Court no longer has such confidence.” — U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court Order, p. 12, 3-9-2009

The saying goes that a week is a long time in politics – meaning that big changes can surprisingly occur in a short period.

This week, at the 68th Session of the General Assembly of the United Nations was one such watershed event.

The engine for this dramatic change was Iran’s diplomatic thrust. Iranian President Dr. Hassan Rouhani delivered a speech to the assembly that enthralled those willing to listen while leaving detractors reeling from their own inadequacy.

The UK Ministry of Defence is worried; worried that the public have become ‘risk averse’ to the point that we won’t want to go to war anymore; so worried that in November 2012 they wrote a report – The Implications of Current Attitudes to Risk for the Joint Operational Concept – made public today by the Guardian. The report, while purportedly studying ‘risk’, is really asking ‘How do we sell war to the public’? Continue reading →

Seymour Hersh has got some extreme ideas on how to fix journalism – close down the news bureaus of NBC and ABC, sack 90% of editors in publishing and get back to the fundamental job of journalists which, he says, is to be an outsider.

“The very concept of objective truth is fading out of the world. Lies will pass into history.” George Orwell (Eric Arthur Blair, 1903-1950)

Since the US-UK project on Syria is back, invoking Syria’s President as Hitler – as previously, Slobodan Milosevitch, Saddam Hussein, and Colonel Quaddafi in earlier “Crusades” – it is instructive to note how the ludicrous claims mirror the strategy of Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s Reich Minister of Propaganda.

Recently, Jonathan Cymberknopf wrote a very upbeat article where he makes it sound like third party presidential candidates in 2012 achieved remarkable, even historic, success. He provides considerable data on how a number of third party candidates did better in 2012 than in the previous presidential election. For many years I strongly advocated third party options and even was a state chairperson for a major third party. Continue reading →

Are we living in a time of inverted totalitarianism? Pulitzer prize-winning author Chris Hedges tells me we are in this first episode of the Moment of Clarity Show – SEASON TWO! This episode was made possible by Coalition Films and our generous Kickstarter supporters!

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The Senate voted to save net neutrality. Now we need the House of Representatives to do the same, or else the FCC will let ISPs like Comcast and Verizon ruin the internet with throttling, censorship and unnecessary fees. Click the image below to write to Congress.

The Golden Rule

“That which is hateful to you do not do to another ... the rest (of the Torah) is all commentary, now go study.” - Rabbi Hillel

Amendment I

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

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